Ouverture du Corsaire

Despite its title, this concert overture composed in 1844 has nothing to do with Byron’s poem The Corsair. It may refer to James Fenimore Cooper, since Berlioz had considered naming his score Le Corsaire rouge, after the novel The Red Rover. However, his source of inspiration remains unclear. Composed while he was on holiday in Nice in August 1844, the work was first performed, on 19 January 1845 at the Cirque Olympique, under the title La Tour de Nice (The tower of Nice). Was it the press reactions that caused him to revise the work between 1845 and 1851 and change the title? Indeed the author of an article that appeared in L’Illustration had heard in the music an evocation of fantastic visions: “It is like a tale by Hoffmann. It plunges you into an indefinable malaise; it torments you like a bad dream, and fills your imagination with strange and terrible images. It must be the case that nowadays this tower is inhabited by hundreds of owls and white-tailed eagles, and the surrounding ditches must be filled with snakes and toads. Maybe it served as a lair for brigands or was the fortress of some medieval tyrant.” Le Corsaire adopts the formal structure of all of Berlioz’s overtures from Benvenuto Cellini onwards: a swift-moving digest of what is to come (Allegro assai), then a slow section (Adagio sostenuto) and finally a fast one (Allegro assai). Continuity and unity are manifested by a gradual transition from the Adagio to the quick tempo of the last part, and by the presence in the second Allegro assai of thematic elements from the previous sections.